Microsoft surprised Android developers last year with the launch of a brand new emulator designed for performance and features that aren't available anywhere else. While the initial Preview release only included an image for KitKat, subsequent updates introduced an expanded set of emulator images and some valuable new features. While a high-speed emulator is certainly compelling, many developers still didn't adopt it because it had to be downloaded and installed alongside a very large Visual Studio package, not to mention it was also frustrating to set up for use with other IDEs. Last week, Microsoft unburdened the emulator and released it as a standalone download along with step-by-step instructions to set it up to easily run with Android Studio and Eclipse with ADT.

The Nintendo DS, though pretty old by game standards, is a tricky thing to emulate. Aside from the dual screens, it uses standard button, touchscreen, and microphone inputs, and it has a plethora of 2D and 3D games available. Despite this, DraStic remains the best emulator for the DS on the Play Store (and one of the most complete emulators for Android regardless of system). The latest update adds even more goodies.

First and foremost, DraStic is now compatible with Android TV, much to the delight of SHIELD TV owners. (Hint: remap one of the extra buttons on your controller to switch between the Nintendo DS screens.) There's also a new high-resolution 3D mode - polygonal graphics can be upscaled for HD play in ways that won't work for pixel graphics.

Today's Android devices are powerful enough to run circles around most game consoles of yesteryear, but that doesn't mean emulating old hardware is easy. 2D games, sure, walk in the park—but replicating the original PlayStation is a different thing entirely. Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped an Android developer from trying to tackle the even more powerful PlayStation 2.

Play!, as the emulator is called, also supports Windows, Mac OS X, and iOS. Here's a video of an Android tablet running Final Fantasy X. Though they aren't demonstrated, we can see that the tester also has Capcom Vs SNK 2, Dragon Quest VIII, Dynasty Warriors 2, Gradius V, Kingdom Hearts, and Space Harrier saved to the device.

The classic game emulation scene for Android is really blowing up. Not only do we have more single-use emulators than ever, more powerful hardware is opening up the sixth generation of home consoles like the Dreamcast and Gamecube. Today one of the more notable all-in-one emulators is getting a huge update on the Play Store: RetroArch. The multi-platform, multi-console emulator has updated its entire user interface system and added a few under-the-hood changes as well.

This video is from the Linux version of RetroArch, but it shows the new menu system in action.

The most striking addition is the user interface, with a cross-style main menu reminiscent of the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable.

Emulating games is hard, y'all. There are a ton of classic game emulators for Android, and most of them work really well... replicating relatively ancient, low-power hardware for two dimensions. Even something like the 20-year-old PlayStation is difficult (but not impossible) to emulate on the latest mobile hardware, which is objectively about a hundred times more powerful. That's what you get when console makers create more or less customized hardware and software that doesn't have to play nice with any other platforms.

Microsoft is in the midst of its annual Build conference. This is sort of like Google I/O or WWDC, but with fewer online viewers. Wednesday's keynote presentation was filled with announcements about Windows 10, the Microsoft Edge browser, an augmented reality headset, and quite a bit more. One product failed to earn stage time: the Visual Studio Emulator for Android, but developers may find renewed interest since the latest version is showing maturity as it expands through the addition of Device Profiles and a number of other recent enhancements.

We originally covered Microsoft's emulator for Android after a mid-November release during the Connect() conference.

In his review of the original SHIELD a year and a half ago, Jeremiah Rice noted that NVIDIA's gaming gadget was amazingly well-suited to game emulators. Combined with a robust emulation scene on Android, especially for older game consoles, it's possible to play a ton of great games on the SHIELD without ever stopping by the Play Store. This morning NVIDIA issued a software update specifically to improve performance for game emulator apps.

Update 101 is tiny, just over 3 megabytes, and in fact NVIDIA's release notes say that the OTA is "optional" (something you don't often hear from manufacturers). Even if you're not an emulation fan yourself, the nature of Android upgrades means it's probably easier to download and apply it than to ignore it (and the SHIELD's unlocked bootloader means that root users aren't inconvenienced).

There's a huge emulator community on Android, helped in no small part by the fact that modern smartphones can handle older game console software without breaking a sweat. But 3D consoles and newer portable machines are harder to emulate - they require more power and more complex software to get bigger, more demanding games to run well. The PPSSPP emulator (for PlayStation Portable games) has been in development for a variety of platforms for several years, but now the 1.0 release is available for Android via an easy Play Store download.

When it comes to software development, there are two very distinct camps on the subject of tools: those who prefer to keep it simple with just a text editor and a compiler, and then those who go straight for a fully-featured IDE with all the bells and whistles. For more than a decade, the undisputed champion of IDEs is Microsoft with its assorted versions of Visual Studio. Having come from years of work on Visual Studio, nothing pained me more than the first (several) times I started up Eclipse. While Android Studio goes a long way towards a streamlined development experience, it still lacks much of the fit and finish of Visual Studio.

Well, sort of. Windows 95 is running in ADosBox, one of several DOS emulators available on the Google Play Store. Naturally there are a few problems: in addition to a boot up time of several minutes and a few error notifications at login, the emulated Windows seems to run out of virtual memory if you try to open any programs.